Lessons and Activities

High School

Try some of these lesson plans and classroom activities for teaching economics or personal finance.

Basic Economic Concepts

Lesson: Exploring Careers in Economics
Do your students love studying economics? Would you like to encourage them to consider a career in this interesting and growing field? If so, this is the right lesson for your class. A related article discusses the need for diversity in the economics field.Spring 2016

Three teachers' strategies for presenting circular flow
How many young consumers ponder the economic relationships between businesses and households? How many understand that this interaction is essential for market economies to function? Three Atlanta-area teachers share lessons and strategies for teaching circular flow.Fall 2011

International

Passport to Globalization
In this hands-on lesson, students travel the globe and explore the Federal Reserve's use of easy and tight monetary policy to address domestic economic problems.Fall 2015

Show Me the Euro
Designed to introduce foreign language students to international trade and foreign exchange markets, this lesson includes a series of hands-on activities that allow students to participate in engaging, project-based learning and technology centered activities that foster higher-order thinking skills and creativity.Fall 2015

Teaching tips for international economics
As world trade shrinks the world, students must understand the basic concepts of international trade and global trade policies. Read the latest Extra Credit to learn how other teachers use creative teaching methods to enhance their teaching of international economics.
Fall 2011

Using multimedia and T-shirts to teach globalization
A variety of resources, including books, podcast, videos—and even the Made in tags attached to your students' T-shirts—can launch your classroom discussions about globalization. Read more in the newest Extra Credit.Fall 2011

Macroeconomics

Web Quest: Economics of Natural Disasters
September is national preparedness month in the United States. This designation reminds us to expect the unexpected and take steps to minimize the negative effects disasters can have on our lives. In this web quest, you will focus specifically on natural disasters and their economic impact.Fall 2015

An Economic SIM-ulus Package
Students discover how economic conditions in their own community are taken into account at meetings of the Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) in this four-unit lesson.Fall 2015

Live from Atlanta, It's the Janet Yellen Show
Chair Janet Yellen has asked your students to help her teach young people about the importance of the Federal Reserve System in their lives. Use this engaging lesson simulation to teach your students about the Federal Reserve.Fall 2015

The Trial of Monty Terry
Are your students budding thespians? If so, use this reader's theater to have your students act out the roles commonly featured in many courtroom dramas as they determine whether the defendant, Monty Terry (monetary policy), on trial to determine whether this defendant is guilty of manipulating the economy, controlling the money supply, and outperforming fiscal policy in solving macroeconomic instability.Fall 2015

Teenage Unemployment: What's the Local Story?
Challenge your students to collect and analyze economic data on teen unemployment for their own school. This high school economics lesson from Extra Credit will help your students find their "inner economist."Spring 2015

Apptivity of the Month: Econ Lowdown
This classroom activity allows students to use their own tools—their smartphones and tablets—with an app from the St. Louis Fed to learn about inflation and the cost of credit. This article offers some tips.Spring 2014

Apptivity of the Month: FRED
Do you need more ideas for your smartphone or mobile tablet lab? The St. Louis Fed has an app that allows you to explore vast amounts of economic data. Read more.Spring 2014

Another Visit to FRED to Find Primary Data
Join us on another tour of the user-friendly treasure trove of economic data called FRED, short for Federal Reserve Economic Data. This article walks you through the process of creating charts to view the effects of recent monetary policy efforts on interest rates.Spring 2013

Atlanta Fed Adds Another Tool to Teachers' Toolkit
The Atlanta Fed launched an animated video series last April with a primer on inflation. The second installment looked at gross domestic product.Extra Credit notes that the videos' engaging graphics and straightforward examples are an excellent tool for teaching these basic economic concepts.Fall 2012

Ideas for Teaching Inflation
How do you teach students the difference between inflation and changes in the cost of living? Extra Credit offers tips, including a time travel exercise, for teaching these concepts.Fall 2012

Introducing Students to Inflation Indexes
CPI, PPI, PCE...More than a jumble of letters, these indexes give important information about inflation and the economy.Extra Credit offers teachers a primer on inflation and inflation indexes.Fall 2012

Let FRED Help Your Students Tell an Economic Story
This Extra Credit article takes the reader step by step through a process of gathering information on inflation using Federal Reserve Economic Data, or FRED. FRED is an excellent classroom tool for researching any economic issue.Fall 2012

Lords of Finance: History, economics, and finance
In 2010, Fed Chairman Bernanke mentioned the Pulitzer Prize-winning Lords of Finance as a resource for helping people understand the recent financial crisis.Extra Credit reviews this important book, which chronicles the Great Depression, and offers questions to facilitate classroom discussion.Spring 2012

Ready-made current events for the economics classroomEconSouth, the Atlanta Fed's quarterly economic and business magazine, is a treasure trove of current economic events.Extra Credit reviews some of these stories and offers accompanying discussion questions to help economic educators link core economic concepts to the real world.Spring 2012

Teach the basics with the imaginative Little Book of Economics
An excellent nonfiction book to supplement your textbooks, The Little Book explains basic macroeconomic, finance, and globalization concepts. Read a concise review and get access to guided discussion questions in the March 2012 issue of Extra Credit.Spring 2012

The case of the ailing economy
How do you engage your students in a real discussion of current economic conditions? Make the discussion a project. Here is an activity that gets them to hone their critical thinking skills.Fall 2011

Economically Speaking: The ABCs of GDP
Economy-watchers look at GDP as a measure of a nation's overall economic health. Find out the fundamentals about this often-quoted indicator. In the related activity, students will determine what components of a country's spending make up its GDP, and then they compute real and nominal GDP for a fictional economy. Finally, students investigate alternate measures of a country's standard of living.Spring 2009

Monetary policy starts in your own backyard
How does the Fed gather the information used to formulate monetary policy? Besides examining statistical data, Federal Reserve Banks use grassroots sources—businesspeople perhaps from your own area—to inform the decision-making process.Spring 2006

Personal Finance

Lesson: Exploring Careers in Economics
Do your students love studying economics? Would you like to encourage them to consider a career in this interesting and growing field? If so, this is the right lesson for your class. A related article discusses the need for diversity in the economics field.Spring 2016

Banking & Budgeting
Use this five-day unit to introduce upper elementary or middle grade students to personal finance decision making and the basics of banking.Fall 2015

The Bank of Good Habits
Use this lesson to conduct investment and banking simulations to introduce your students to the importance of saving and investing in this four-lesson unit.Fall 2015

Apptivity of the Month: Building Wealth
Do you have a bring-your-own-device program or a mobile tablet lab at your school? How will you integrate these technologies into your classroom? Here's an "apptivity" to help get you started.Spring 2014

The basics of car insurance
Teens may think a driver's license is the only document they need to get behind the wheel. But having adequate car insurance is just as important—to guard against the unexpected.Spring 2011

Teaching students to be savvy savers
Although the recent recession has awakened many Americans to the importance of saving, many still do not save enough. A number of resources are available for teaching students the importance of saving and how to establish good savings habits.Spring 2011

Why students need to understand investing basics
Young people must understand the fundamentals of investing as early as possible. We may have to file this entire topic under the "youth is wasted on the young" category, but while they may not realize it, our students are blessed with the luxury of time. Spring 2011

The Changing Nature of Payments
Although Americans still wrote 33 billion checks in 2006, check usage is declining, giving way to electronic payment methods such as debit and credit cards and automated clearinghouse transactions.Spring 2008